


A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read

by panther



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-22
Updated: 2012-03-22
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panther/pseuds/panther
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>.4 times Charles read Erik's mind and shouldn't have and the one time he should have and didn't. Slowly, Charles comes to understand the gravity of Erik's situation while struggling to come to terms with his own mutation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read

**Author's Note:**

> http://crescentfanfic.livejournal.com/4894.html fanmix here !  
>  With thanks to Liz for my lovely art! Check out the mix and make sure to leave your thoughts! :D Also, thanks to the mods for letting me post this after my posting date after computer issues. ♥ Also, thanks to Katie for the help and for convincing me to do this in the first place by being the epic fangirls he is.

I had never expected to find several other mutants when we arrived and I certainly had not expected to find another telepath in the group we were tracking. It was an odd feeling to be around so many when for such a long time it had only been Raven and myself. At first I struggle to get my head around it while trying to block out the panic from those around me who had also been thrown for a loop. 

Then there had been the mutant, Erik, who was able to control metal in some way. I had never heard of such a mutation before and cannot pretend that it did not fascinate me. I had no right on that day to approach a man who was clearly emotionally and physically compromised, shivering on the deck of the boat we had dragged him on to, and read his mind. I had no right at all, and so often I don’t, but as it seems so normal to do so I sometimes fear that I don’t feel the guilt in ways that I should anymore. 

I didn’t that day.

I read his mind and found it, as I had the first time I had reached out to him, simply fascinating. Images flash through my mind and it takes me a few moments to realise that they are in fact memories. Memories of train tracks that don’t lead anywhere and long wooden shed like structures that sit in neat rows surrounded by mass hysteria. The images flicker too quickly for me to pick up words or names but the faces show enough. Terror is in every gaze and the uniforms give away the soldiers. Black uniforms, _Nazis_. Then a man at a desk, a gun pointed to a woman’s head, a coin trembling on chipped wood and then the same face on the submarine we had just lost.

That is when I shudder and blink, pulling myself out of his head before he can even realise that I was even there, and move towards the other side of the deck. He notices me at that point and his eyes find mine for a second and again I connect with his mind and my knees nearly buckle with just how _angry_ he is. I shut it down, block it out, and focus on appearing like I have not been affected. 

I don’t think he realises what I have done and I have no plans to inform him. Clearly, his past is dictating his present and he is not _just_ another mutant, but one who has been taken advantage of, one who has not lived as comfortable a life as I.

I don’t know why but it suddenly seems important to keep him away from Raven. She is angry enough with the world even if she thinks I am not aware of it and the last thing she needs is encouragement from this beautiful yet clearly broken man. I feel compelled to help him though, dangerously so. I push away from the railing and move towards him words catching in my throat for a moment, “You should come into the cabin. It is cold out here and you will catch your death.”

“You read my mind,” is his only reply and I barely hide a flinch before he continues and I’m let off the hook I had hung myself on, “In the water. You are a telepath or some sort?”

“Yes, my name is Charles and I am able to read minds,” I inform him slowly, raising my voice slightly in order to be heard over the harsh winds of the sea. He nods while remaining silent, processing the information but not really revealing what he thinks of it. In fact, he doesn’t say anything at all, merely gets slowly to his feet and pulls the blanket closer before slipping around the other side of the deck and disappearing inside. 

If I had not read his mind, I would not feel this worry setting into my bones and I wouldn’t be so intrigued by this man and his past. I only have myself to blame. 

 

*  
It was always clear to me that Erik lacked the same motivations as the other recruits we had found for our group. They are filled with youthful excitement while Erik has more of a mature resignation about him. I find it easy to get on with the man and yet profoundly difficult to understand him at the same time. While the others are filled with almost worrying boundless enthusiasm Erik always seems to be far more reserved about the situations we find ourselves in. I feel a growing sense of unease as we help each of the group come to use their own mutational talents to the best of their abilities. 

I confess I planned to look a little deeper into his thoughts when we were helping to train Banshee on the grounds because of this. Surface thoughts are always floating around my mind and I cannot block them out entirely but when Erik pushes Banshee from the platform, I find myself startled and suddenly looking into the depths of his mind sooner than I had planned as if it was a kneejerk defensive reaction. It is something I have never been able to prevent, the defensive look when I am startled or worried to try and find a way out. Too many times it had been trying to find the right words to ward off my mother. This time is different and though I was convinced our companion would not be hurt and despite a nervous laugh escaping me I cannot pretend I am comfortable with Erik’s form of _training_.

The first thing that strikes me is that the terrible conflicted anguish I had felt when I had read his mind before was not simply unique to the moment in the bitterly cold water I had found him in but a constant presence in his mind. It is deeply disturbing to think that he carries these feelings around with him at all times. Again I am struck with a deep sense of brotherly concern for Raven and how close she was getting to Erik who was clearly, more deeply affected by his past than I had previously believed. 

Clapping and cheering for Banshee is probably the only thing that stops a look of horror crossing my face before we began to make our way back down from the satellite and onto the grounds below again. It is true that Erik had complete faith in our friend’s ability to use his mutation as well as in Hank, and that I too had considered giving him the push that he needed but that is not what strikes me. What strikes me is how Erik has a complete lack of concern. There is no nervous thrill in Erik that I would have thought of as normal, just an inner conviction that things would work out and more worryingly a lack of outright concern for if it didn’t. There is no adrenaline rush like I feel in myself and sense in Hank and Banshee, just a sense of grim satisfaction as if another piece of a puzzle I can’t see has been put into place. Fear was the key to unlocking our friend’s understanding of his mutation in Erik’s eyes and that worries me greatly. I would have been devastated and guilt ridden by the loss and a flash through Hank’s thoughts reveals he would have felt the same but not Erik. Erik is different. Erik’s thoughts chill me to the bone, as Banshee lands nearby and begins to ramble about his progress, and we make our way back to the mansion. 

Erik would have seen any injury as a failed experiment and while yes it would have upset him I doubt very much so that he would have been as deeply affected as the rest of us. Collateral damage of human life. I fear he simply is no longer capable of it. His emotional scarring has had a terrible affect on him and I suspect hold him back both from getting the most of his mutation and also from embracing and enjoying life as much as he could. His world view has been tainted by his childhood yet I cannot hold him any ill feelings for that. It stops me interfering, saying anything, _doing_ anything.

What I have seen in Erik’s mind could drive another to insanity. Erik’s past strengthens my resolve to stop Shaw but not in the bitter and angry way that it drives Erik. Instead I want to stop him so that others do not suffer the same fate, because there are other ways to train mutants and better roads to a world where mutants and humans walk hand in hand. Erik needs a safe way to come into his powers, a way of showing him that there is a _better_ way to access your gift than fear and anguish. 

On the one hand it assures me that I have the right idea about how to help Erik in the coming days but on the other I feel conflicted. Again, I had read his mind without his permission, despite him making it clear that he did not want me to do so. I feel the weight of responsibility settle in my chest, knowing that I must help Erik now. It is too _dangerous_ to allow him to carry on with this mentality and yet at the same time I now fear that what I also need to work on is my own control. My arrogance grows with every successful development from one of our group and I allow my powers to wander without permission. Before, it seemed my mutation was amusing, something to help me progress in life, and to stay out of trouble when needed. Now it troubles my conscious and I can only blame myself. 

I should never have looked but I can’t forget what I saw. 

*

It is common knowledge in the house that while the rest of us are doing our best to enhance and train our powers, Hank is looking for a way to control and eradicate others. It unsettles me that he is doing so as it seems to defeat our very purpose in a way, but more so it worries me that Raven takes such interest in it. It is as I pass Raven’s bedroom one evening that I hear Hank’s voice and pause, another kneejerk reaction because Raven is my little sister and there is a _male_ in her _bedroom_.

“I think I nearly have it. The cure I mean. Truly your genetic make-up allowed me to find what I needed to finish it. I just need to...do a few more things and I think it will work,” Hank states excitedly and I try to hold back the groan as I press my ear to the door. Suddenly this form of spying on people’s conversations and thoughts seems worse than reading their minds. Reading minds is instinctive and natural but I actually have to seek this out. Still, this is Raven. 

“Really? I can’t believe it might actually be possible. To be normal,” I hear Raven sigh and a flare of irritation goes through me because Raven is not _abnormal_ merely _special_. It pains me that she feels that I have a problem with her mutation, the fact that her skin is blue because I don’t. It is just that she is my sister and who in their right mind wants to see their sister walking around naked?

“I know. Like I said, I nearly have it but there is a lot to be done yet. I don’t think anyone else will be interested in it. I thought Alex might have been but he seems to be getting so much better with his that now I am not sure,” I hear Hank say awkwardly, and suddenly I am furious. 

Furious that he might suggest this to Alex while he is still learning and vulnerable and lead him towards a science experiment that might not work, turn him into a lab rat to test a cure, take away his gift because of some delusion that it might be easier, and just as I am about to storm into Raven’s room I realise that the anger isn’t _mine_.

I am channelling Erik. 

Reaching out, I locate him just around the corner from me, a few paces at best, and quickly make my way to him before he does something stupid like barge into Raven’s room. 

“Erik,” I breathe, attempting to make it sound natural and like I just happened to be coming up this way. He looks at me sharply, almost accusing, before he tilts his head in greeting.

“Charles.”

“I was on my way to the gardens for some fresh air. Care to join me?” I ask carefully. He stares at me, and I can’t help but feel slightly unsafe. Erik is a bigger man than me and though I have my telepathy and the talents that affords me, there is something about Erik that puts me on edge. I have never felt such rage in a person before yet when I stand and look at him now as he contemplates my question I cannot see any sign of it. That is what is truly terrifying. He looks perfectly undisturbed by what we had clearly both overheard in Raven’s room .

One moment he had clearly intended to do Hank serious harm for suggesting that Alex might want use of his serum and the next he appears perfectly fine. Curiously I reach out to his mind and I feel that the anger is still there, still boiling away inside him and ready to erupt at any moment, yet his eyes are calm and his body relaxed. My experiences have always taught me that such things make a man dangerous but I am not sure what to do about it. Removing us from the situation seems the only sensible thing to do. 

“If you want. Though, I wouldn’t mind a game of chess if you are interested. We could play on the terrace?” Erik suggests, turning around on his heel to walk with me down the corridor.

“Yes, yes that is fine,” I murmur and then he is smiling and hurrying towards his room, shouting that he will meet me out there. I don’t feel it is my place to question him on what I felt and read in his mind. I had no right to do so, had in fact promised him that I would not break his confidence like that even if it was an accident, and at the end of the day I shouldn’t have been listening to Raven and Hank’s conversation either. 

I had no right to violate anyone’s privacy, no matter how easily and naturally it might come to me. It wasn’t the world that I lived in. 

*

 

It wasn’t a defence. 

It never could be. I was just so overcome with my own anger and the same question kept spinning around _my head_ concerning _why had he done that_ over and over again that I found myself in his mind looking for the answer. Emma Frost was a despicable person but he could have _killed_ her and was Erik really so dangerous? Capable of murder? I didn’t want to believe so. I didn’t want to believe that a mutation could be used in such a way. I wanted to keep my rose tinted vision of the genetic quirks that I had believed in before all this started; the idea that mutations were wondrous things and could only be a _positive_ thing. 

It was about Shaw. It was _always_ about Shaw. That is evident the moment I slip into his mind and I don’t even have to look far. Shaw wasn’t there. Erik had gone for Shaw. Emma had been the unfortunate victim of Erik’s frustrations because when I wade through the fury I sense an admiration for her gifts just as Erik admires my gift or Raven’s. Sides didn’t come into it. It wasn’t _personal_ and yet he had walked such a fine line. We are back on the truck, trundling through the forest with Emma handcuffed and surrounded by armed guards while Erik and I huddle by the doorway. Again, he doesn’t _look_ angry but beneath the surface is seething in the pain and anger of terrible memories. 

Children being ripped out of the arms of parents. Panic. Terror. Gates bending but not giving totally. Soldiers screaming. Pouring rain. Women crying. Men pleading. Needles pressing into pale skin. Slaps across the face. Tattooed black numbers on angry red flesh as tears drop from bleary eyes. Fingers clawing at marked skin. A young Erik huddling in the corner of a damp hut. The paralysing fear. The agony of working day and night. Grief that never ends. Loss that never stops. Fear that never lessens. A coin. His mother. The gun. Shaw.

It must have been the concentration camp. 

Once I am in, I can’t seem to pull myself out as easily as I would have before. The memories keep coming even though I desperately want them to stop. I should never have looked because this horror is unfathomable. People had heard of what had happened but to see it, to recall it as if it were me, to _feel_ it. Erik’s life unfolds across my mind like a scattered jigsaw, tiny glimpses that don’t make sense on their own, can’t be understood, slowly coming together to form a horrifying image. I see the maps on the wall of an apartment, the sketches of Shaw, the information that had been painstakingly gathered over the years and I realise in the truck, in the middle of Russia, that for Erik this is about so much more than revenge. Revenge is too simple a word to define the thoughts and ideas that cross Erik’s mind. 

Obsession is the only thing that comes close. It has completely taken over Erik’s mind. Yet as much as this absolutely horrifies me, this look into his clearly broken mind, I don’t feel like I can do anything about it. I don’t have the right to. I wanted to know but wanting to know something doesn’t give me the right to search for it like that. If I confront him on his obsession then he will take out his rage on me and I confess I find it better to protect myself and take the cowardly route out. I should say nothing but be aware of his emotions. I had looked into his memories before to find the one of his mother after all. I knew he was capable of good thoughts. 

So instead I say nothing, keeping my thoughts to myself, and allowing Erik’s thoughts to remain with him. In a twisted way, I do not want to lose him. I feel a connection with Erik that I cannot define. He was the first mutant other than Raven that I had been truly aware of, spoken to and interacted with. There is also the part of me that fears what he would do if not with me and the group. His strangulation of Emma had shown what he is capable of and his intensions for Shaw mean he is not someone I want roaming around by himself.

Perhaps I am overconfident for believing I alone can control him as I alone truly know him. Or at least I hope I do. 

*  
It turns out I never knew him at all. I could read it, I could feel it, but that didn’t allow me to truly _understand_ it. Erik taught me a lot about my mutation in that way. Sometimes I think he taught me a lot more than I taught him. 

I had a feeling that Erik wasn’t on the same wavelength as us when we were on the jet. I knew that. I knew and did absolutely nothing about it all the same. Shaw was his target and I knew that too but I wanted to cling on to the notion that our time together and the discussions that we had had before our time in the Soviet Union and after, over dinner and chess, had made some sort of impact on him. I wanted to believe that I had changed his mind and that his statement of peace not being an option was him being dramatic about things. He had not clarified his need to kill. Perhaps, there was a future in which there was some sort of conflict but one where people did not die by Erik’s hand. Clearly, the task we had set ourselves was not peaceful today. We were heading straight into a war zone but none of us had any intention of taking life if it could be avoided. 

I had desperately hoped that the same could be said for Erik. 

As usual he looked calm and undisturbed by the chaos we were flying into. The realisation that he would be needed to raise the submarine didn’t seem to bother him. He was confident in his abilities and I confess that I took great pride in the fact that I had taught him to reach his potential with his mutation. How far he had come in such little time. Yet that proved my undoing. My cockiness, my _arrogant_ belief that I had been in any way able to persuade him away from what had clearly been a life’s obsession, and that I alone could have convinced him of a new way of living in such a short space of time. 

Erik never wanted that. We were a means to an end for him; a route to Shaw. I should have stayed in his mind after he pulled the submarine up, I should have looked into his thoughts on the beach. If I could go back I would read his intentions and not let him go into the submarine after Shaw alone. 

I would have seen his murderous intent and I might have halted his pathway to self- destruction. This war that is unfolding might have been stopped if I had broken his confidence one last time and _really_ looked for what I needed to see before it was too late to do anything about it. I didn’t want to see his intention to leave when he had dealt with Shaw, one way or the other, didn’t want to see his intentions to leave us, leave _me_. I was too much of a coward. 

He had been frantic on the jet before he went in, hardly taking in what I was saying, his eyes wild and at times unfocussed. His hands had clawed at the doorway of the jet as he half-crouched, almost like an animal waiting to pounce. I should have looked. In a way I shouldn’t even have needed to but should have _known_. Erik went in there, as I settled in his mind and yet never really paid attention to where I was, and nothing was same from the minute I let him pass me.

It was like I was standing in the middle of a busy highway focussed on one approaching sign while ignoring the chaos of cars and horns all around me. Perhaps if I had intervened he would still have killed Shaw but it might have been different. Shaw got to him while I couldn’t and something changed. Perhaps, if I knew how fragile Erik was, I wouldn’t have let it happen. Perhaps, Shaw would not have died. Perhaps, Erik would not have turned those missiles back on their targets. 

Perhaps my world would not have changed. Perhaps doesn’t really answer any questions though. It certainly doesn’t ease any of my guilt. 

*  
When I look back on it now I guess I thought that he could be saved and was arrogant enough to believe I could be his saviour. Yet I was no knight and Erik certainly no damsel. Mutations were simply wonderful to me before Erik, a quirk of life, a marvel to be behold. I never understood Raven’s frustration with hers because it was easily hidden if so desired but Erik changed that. Erik changed everything. 

I don’t think people quite understand how difficult it is to be a telepath. It is both a wonderful and terrible mutation to have. Where is the limit? Why would anyone want to be so close to someone that means they may never keep a secret? I spent the first part of my life regretting every time I broke someone’s trust and the rest of it feeling guilty for the one time I did not cross the line. Funny is not the word I would use for it, yet a smile comes to my face all the same. It is bitter and twisted, as am I for the fool I was and the fool I remain. 

It would have changed nothing.


End file.
